


Material

by MeansToOffend (goodmorning)



Series: Pick Me Up [17]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2016-2017 NHL Season, 2017-2018 NHL Season, Anaheim Ducks, M/M, Pick-Up Lines, i almost tagged swedes/ikea as a relationship tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 22:20:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmorning/pseuds/MeansToOffend
Summary: "Hampus and Rickard are eating breakfast when it happens."





	Material

Hampus and Rickard are eating breakfast when it happens. Hampus is halfway through his first cup of coffee when he looks across the table. Rickard is sitting there staring at his eggs with bleary eyes, and Hampus thinks, warmly, _That’s my best friend._ But this is something he thinks every day, part of the normal routine, one of many things in his life that remind him how lucky he is.

This morning, though, the thought goes on, before he can walk it back: _And I’d really like to kiss him._

Maybe this should be a big deal, a shaking of his foundations, but it doesn’t feel that way. It’s more of a little extra, like finding his parents have added a deck to his childhood home. His feelings, like the house, are the same as they’ve always been, and the house itself was more than good enough. Still, now that the deck exists, he might as well see if he can do anything with it - if Rickard has a deck of his own.

Hampus stares across the table - Rickard has reached the point where he’s remembered that forks exist - and tries to think how best to broach the subject.

In movies, Rickard would say, “See something you like?” and Hampus would smirk, sit in his lap, and kiss the smugness off both their faces.

In real life, Rickard drips egg on his shirt, and Hampus discovers his coffee cup is, sadly, empty.

\--

After they’re knocked out of the playoffs, Hampus and Rickard make plans to try and watch Sweden in World Cup qualifying. There’s a match in Stockholm, early June, which helps to make up for the Ducks not playing, just a little. They’re pretty fortunate to get tickets this late, so when Rickard invites Hampus to stay in his guest room, he accepts without a second thought.

Maybe somewhere there’s an idiot who would pretend the guest bed is too hard, _we can just share,_ but Hampus is not that idiot.

They may sleep separately, but they go to the game together - matching in bright yellow kit with the Tre Kronor blue on the breast - and laugh and chant and sling their arms over one another. At halftime, they’re giddy; Sweden is tied with France, of all teams. And then the kiss-cam begins going around.

In movies, they’d appear on the big screen, and Hampus would kiss Rickard even after the camera went away.

In real life, they don’t, and Hampus leans on Rickard to crack a joke, and they lose their voices when Toivonen scores, improbably, in stoppage time.

\--

The advantage, for Hampus, of living with Rickard rather than someone like Silfvy is that Hampus and Rickard get along ridiculously well. Neither of them is too neat or too messy, too loud or too quiet, too rooted in routine. Still, they’re not perfect; occasionally, they do fight.

Today is one of those occasions.

“All I’m asking,” Rickard shouts, “is that when you burn popcorn you open a window and empty the trash can! Is that so difficult?”

“It’s raining!” Hampus bellows back. “You’re being too sensitive!”

“The house is going to smell like sadness for _hours_ ,” says Rickard, clearly moving on to the pouty stage before Hampus is done with yelling. 

The inability to have lengthy fights is the worst of Rickard, and, as always, it sends Hampus into inarticulate rage. He throws up his hands, storms out, gets in his car. The route is familiar, the same one he always drives when they fight. The traffic is heavy, delaying him long enough that his anger begins to ebb.

He’s nearly back to normal by the time he walks into IKEA. Hampus winds his way through the store, the last of his temper replaced with questions about throw pillows he’s never going to buy and rugs he always tells himself he might. Truthfully, though, Hampus is fairly indifferent to IKEA; it’s Rickard who loves it. Maybe it’s because of his brief juniors career here - Hampus really couldn’t say. All he knows is that they have three junk drawers full of gadgets they never use, and Rickard is no longer allowed to set foot in the store by Hampus’ own order.

Eventually, after meandering past bookshelves and desks, tables and chairs, Hampus reaches his destination: the food. With a sigh, he picks out a box of pepparkakor. As indifferent as Hampus otherwise is to IKEA, he hates their pepparkakor; it’s far too dry, and tastes nothing like his grandmother’s. But Rickard loves it, and so Hampus finds himself buying it often, whenever Rickard is upset or Hampus wants to apologise for something.

Like, perhaps, burning popcorn.

When he gets home, it’s dark, the rain has stopped, and Rickard is in his room. 

In movies, Hampus would get out the boombox and stand under Rickard’s window.

In real life, Hampus gets out a plate and leaves three cookies outside Rickard’s door.

\--

When they don’t have any other obligations, Wednesday night is movie night. It’s normally a team thing, and Silfvy, Gibby, Manse, and some of the rookies each stop by sometimes. Tonight, though, it’s just the two of them. This is a slight problem.

Typically, they let the guests choose; if left to do it themselves, Hampus and Rickard inevitably bicker. It’s no different this evening, either. By the time they’ve shot down a dozen of each other’s picks, Hampus is ready to give up and choose randomly.

Then he has an idea.

“Lion King?” he asks.

“Lion King,” Rickard agrees, grinning.

In movies, they’d be watching some action flick right now, and the steamy scene between the hot spy and his flavour of the month would have Rickard’s hand inching up Hampus’ thigh as they pretended to pay attention.

In real life, they’re watching a cartoon they both have memorised, and the first duet between the warthog and the meerkat has Rickard’s arm slung over Hampus’ shoulders as they sing along.

\--

Rickard is the only person Hampus knows who loves cities despite growing up in a suburb. He’s not as bad about it as he used to be, doesn’t insist on exploring Boston or Toronto or Pittsburgh for more than an hour now, but there is one city he refuses to leave alone: New York. Personally, Hampus feels like he’s seen enough of New York for ten people, but he still goes along every time. Someone has to keep Rickard from getting lost or buying bootleg DVDs, after all.

This year they have Wednesday off between games, delighting Rickard. The party that sets out from the hotel is pretty sizeable, rookies who’ve never seen the city before and a few more guys besides. Shawsy, with his terrible sense of direction, just wants them to drop him off at some bar he likes. Rico knows the city but is still trying to find where on the team he fits. Fowls and Manse seem to have some bet going. And Gibby, as always, is coming along just to point Rickard to the bootleg DVDs, since the-movie-night-that-shall-not-be-spoken-of happened.

It’s just before Christmas, so it’s slow going, everyone darting into stores to look for something for their mother, grandpa, or cousin. Hampus and Rickard have already bought gifts for their families, international shipping being what it is, but Hampus looks anyway. 

One of the advantages of playing a professional sport is that he can afford to buy something small or funny for each of his teammates, and he usually tries. Getz has plenty of hats, so he won’t expect the restaurant gift card Hampus picked up last month. Kes is an asshole, so he’ll laugh when Hampus tells him the Halloween mask is prettier than his face. And, of course, there’s already a box of pepparkakor wrapped and under the tiny fake tree for Rickard.

But when they hit some jewelry store, looking at delicate things with fiddly little clasps for Monty’s girlfriend, he sees a chain a lot like the one Rickard just lost, and thinks, _Why not?_

Pretty much everyone peels off after the NHL store, and it’s just Hampus and Rickard and Gibby left. They’ve reached the dangerous stage, the one where Rickard decides he knows how to jaywalk. Sure enough, he tries it at the next streetcorner, and Hampus is only just in time to pull him out of the way of a taxi.

In movies, Hampus would pull Rickard further into his arms, and they’d kiss on the corner in front of Gibby and taxi and all.

In real life, Hampus calls Rickard an idiot, and they bump fists on the corner while Gibby laughs his ass off and the taxi speeds away honking.

\--

They get back to the hotel and Hampus is dismayed to find that Rickard somehow managed to buy a DVD after all. Still, there’s an easy plan that will fix this: he can snap it now and pretend that it broke in transit.

Gibby has other ideas. “It’s movie night,” he says when Hampus opens the door.

He’s brought popcorn. Hampus has no choice but to let him in.

It’s not the latest Star Wars film. It’s a porn remake featuring glow-in-the-dark condoms.

In movies, they’d turn it off, send Gibby away, and entertain each other with blowjobs instead.

In real life, they leave it on, throw popcorn at Gibby, and entertain each other with bad jokes.

\--

It’s been eight months, and Hampus is no closer to figuring out whether Rickard has a deck or not. Sometimes he thinks he catches him staring, just out of the corner of his eye, but he can’t be sure if it’s real, coincidence, or just wishful thinking. This is the other thing Hampus has learned: he’s kind of a coward when it comes to feelings. Christmas has passed, and the chain is still sitting in the back of his sock drawer. So it’s not really any wonder that he hasn’t been able to bring himself to just _ask._

The opportunity presents itself completely by accident.

It’s mid-January, just before his birthday, and they’ve reached the part of the season where Hampus desperately needs to do laundry. He’s down to the last of his shirts, the ones from before he was NHL-bulky. They cling to his torso in ways that aren’t quite comfortable, and he’s already busted the hems of more than a few sleeves, but there is a positive to this: Rickard is definitely staring.

Still, Hampus isn’t quite ready to confront his feelings straight out. He figures he’ll know the right time when he sees it.

The right time comes two days later, when Hampus pulls on an old Ducks shirt he didn’t know he still had and discovers the fabric is the softest he’s felt in weeks. The screen-printed tag has worn off, so he can’t read what it’s made of, but he wants about twenty more. 

_Rickard might know,_ he thinks, because in his eight-and-a-half more months on the planet, Rickard has managed to gather a great wealth of mostly-useless facts. So Hampus decides to find out.

“Do you know what kind of material this is?” he asks, catching Rickard’s hand and placing it on his chest without thinking. Rickard hums in thought, stroking the fabric over Hampus’ heart.

In movies, Rickard would tell Hampus he’s overdressed. “So are you,” Hampus would say, and the two of them would be shirtless in moments, kissing frantically, fumbling with their pants.

In real life, Rickard tells Hampus he thinks it’s a poly-cotton blend. “Boyfriend material,” Hampus blurts out, and the two of them are still for a moment, heartbeats frantic, fumbling with their words.

In movies, Rickard sighs out a _yes_ as Hampus gets a hand on his dick, jerking him closer to orgasm. 

In real life, Rickard sighs out a _yes,_ and Hampus gets a hand in his shirt, pulling them closer together.

And in both, they kiss, soft and sweet and full of promise, and Hampus thinks, once more, _This is my best friend._

**Author's Note:**

> \- Seriously, where are all the Ducks fans to write these two? [They're adorable.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q77sf9pH0c4)  
> \- I had specific movies in mind for a couple of these scenarios but mostly they're just common tropes.  
> \- The soccer game really happened as written, though I don't think they were there.
> 
> \- If all goes well, you can expect Minnesota on Monday.


End file.
